What If I Came Knocking
by RaeAnne
Summary: No longer a one shot! Sequel to The House That Love Built. Greg and Allison reflect on what they've lost...what they still have...and what is to come.
1. Pink Houses

Okay ladies and gents :-) I'm back! For a little while anyway...for some reason this idea for a sequel to _**A House That Love Built**_ got stuck in my head and wouldn't leave. Its currently a one shot deal and for all intents and purposes shall remain so, though as you might notice I left it open for easy continuation...I'm just not ready to commit anything more then what's here currently LOL :-) No Beta...I should get one as I know my writing needs one...please don't flame, I'm human I make mistakes-try not to of course and I do check my work but I am my harshest critic and worst beta lol

I would highly suggest reading **_A House That Love Built first_**...otherwise you will be undoubtedly lost.

**The Redundant Obvious Disclaimer:** The characters of the show House are not mine. The quoted lyrics...not mine. No monies made, no fame gained...no benefit gained from this story once so ever...except those delicious reviews which I am so fond of...and at zero calories love to consume as often possible ;-)

**What If I Came Knocking**

_Oh, take your time, don't live too fast  
Troubles will come and they will pass  
You'll find a woman and you'll find love  
And don't forget that there is a someone up above  
-Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simple Man_

**Part One:** There Is A Room

_You enter and close the door behind you  
Now show me the world as seen from the stars  
If only the lights would dim a little  
I'm weary of eyes upon my scars -Incubus, Here In My Room_

**Pink Houses**

She was beautiful. She was nearly nine and half months pregnant and she glowed. She was sleeping peacefully on her side facing him, Greg hadn't slept a full night since about month eight and half. She was very overdue, her doctor had suggested inducing but they were waiting a little longer..._'when the baby is ready...it'll come'_ she said with such serenity and motherly grace he couldn't argue. They had chosen to keep the gender a surprise this time around. Their miracle (unexpected miracle) baby. He was wondering the wisdom in that choice now as he wasn't sure the baby was ever going to be 'ready'. He didn't believe in God, or at least he hadn't till Katie. He had to believe in something, someone greater than himself because if he didn't...if this was all there was, he'd never see his little girl again and the idea that Katie was just gone? That idea was harder to accept than God.

It had been a long, long five months..five months and 2 and half weeks. It had been one hell of a battle and adjustment. She was still skittish around him, he still kept more unsaid than not. Before cat naps were the only sleep he enjoyed he woke frequently most nights in a cool sweat reaching for her to make sure she hadn't left him again. The void between them slowly beginning to close. He could freely touch her now with out her flinching.

He folded his arms behind his head as he turned to lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Staring at the patterns the shadows were casting on the ceiling. In those patterns he saw Katie's happy bubbly baby face. He saw his wife's warm smile and her holding Katie the day they came home from the hospital. There would be a new baby to bring home soon and part of him couldn't help feeling like he was betraying the daughter he barely got to know. Replacing her with a new child that would, God permitting, grow up and see and do all things that Katie didn't.

He wasn't sure whom felt he was betraying more, Katie or this new one that would come into the world already burdened with a terrified mother who would do everything to make sure this one was safe and protected and a father still struggling with a magnitude of issues not the least of which was the death of his daughter. Already this new life was wearing a scar it didn't deserve and certainly didn't need. Life was going to be hard enough.

Katie...precious Katie. There wasn't a hour that went by that he didn't think about her. Didn't ache for her, to hold her, to hear to baby laugh to see her chubby cheeked smile. That baby girl changed everything. Everything he thought he knew, she changed his world and changed his heart. He never knew one being could change so much. Before Katie... People didn't change and everyone lied. Katie turned him into a terrified, worried, vulnerable human being.

His Katie.

The room was stuffy, oppressing. Careful not to disturb Allison he climbed from the bed, pulling on his discarded t-shirt which was draped on the foot. He silently left the room.

Katie's room was still closed. The rose garden mural not suitable for a boy but wouldn't be painted over...boy or girl that baby would not be in Katie's room. The room next to it had been made over in neutral but happy colors, Noah's Ark decorated the crib, walls and curtains. The only thing that was from Katie's room was the rocking chair. Allison moved it in one day without so much as word, it was on a night much like this he discovered it missing. They never spoke of the switch, it just was. He thought maybe it was a good sign, a sign they were coming to better terms. However the rocking chair in a different room was the only thing that changed.

Greg let himself into Katie's room quickly and quietly closing the door. He opened the curtain to let more of the moonlight in, he didn't want to turn on the light. The light was too bright, too sterile. It made the edges too sharp the lines too blunt. With the shadows and quiet he could almost picture her back and playing here.

Sitting on the alphabet block rug, back against the wall below the window he took in the room. The pink doll house she never got to play with...the blocks she more or less eyed and slightly patted with her chubby eleven month old baby hands. The mobile of flowers and toy doctor's instruments that when wound played a lullaby version of Can't Always Get What You Want. A gift from his then new fellows (13 and Taub) Foreman, and Chase.

The doll house...he didn't know why but he could picture his blond haired, blue-green eyed little girl playing there so thoroughly but he did and it made his heart ache just a little more, a little deeper, a little differently. Maybe it was the fact his last name was House, he let a coarse, ironic laugh break the stillness. It wasn't that. Maybe it was because Katie had been conceived in the midst of the chaotic renovation...maybe it was because it was the first thing he had bought and Allison had made such fun of him for it. _'She won't be able to play with this for ages Greg!'_ she had giggled even while arranging the little doll furniture in the old fashioned bright pink house. _'It'll be a choking hazard till she's 8' _she had further chastised him with a gentle laugh, all the while arranging the various rooms 'just so'.

Would the ache ever lessen? Would he be able to live with the guilt if it did? He wasn't sure, but he did wish, in some illogical, irrational part of his soul that he denied existed he wished he could go into one of those little rooms in that pink doll house and find his Katie playing in her room...and they could just be, be in that suspended bit of illogical, cotton candy colored bliss... But those were just wishes and what good were wishes? Especially ones made on little pink houses.

* * *

She felt him leave the room. The shift of the mattress, the quiet click of the door. She let go the breath she had been holding. It was still difficult some nights to share the bed. She loved him. Of that there was no doubt. She had always, would always love him. They were making big strides but at times being in the bed with him...making love with him, she felt a million miles away. She still woke some days with a panic in her chest, ache in arms for a baby that was no longer there...she woke some days thinking Katie was still there. She tried to be open, tried to talk, tried to tell him what was tearing her apart but things like that didn't always have words to describe them.

A source of guilt, of comfort...of confusion but always of great pure love was the baby growing in her womb. This baby such a surprise, such a confusing blessing but... Oh the guilt she felt over the this baby, the guilt over feeling guilty! How many nights, days had she spent sobbing into Katie's pillow? How many hours had she lost just sitting in her room? She would go, sit in that rocking chair that had been her grandmothers and stare up at the sky feeding her daughter wrapped in that receiving blanket she now held clutched to her heart. Could Katie see her, could Katie feel her loving her from so far away? What did the world look like from where Katie surely was...up there in those stars, in those heavens?

It was worse when the baby starting kicking, the feeling of new life moving in her. Any day this precious baby would be in her arms and she couldn't wait and part of her would wonder if she could give this baby all her love, all her devotion like this baby deserved because she was still so wrapped up in a child that was.

Rubbing her belly absently she fights tears that soon are falling silently. She's glad she's alone but part of her is feeling that abandonment of when he left. Sure, on an intellectual level she understands his motives, his reasons. She understands how her actions pushed him to do what he did. But that didn't mean she was cerebral all the time about those things. In fact it rather meant the opposite.

Tears pick up their flow she can't stop them, can't rationalize them away so they slip ever steadily down her cheeks and she hates herself for them. She is going to be a mother...again, any day and instead of being excited and anxious she is terrified and confused.

So many things...so many changes and rearranges that were trying to work themselves out and she is just trying to hang onto something that doesn't make her ache. But she aches. Aches in her heart, in her soul and in her memories.

Soon...soon it would have to better. She hoped.

And that she hoped was a good sign because for while hope seemed lost, lost in a room with no doors, no windows. Lost in a room like a coffin where no air was. But she was finding the cracks and she was finding the hope.

* * *

They laid in bed back to back both knew the other was awake but neither made move to talk. The room was just starting to brighten. The weight of the night hung heavy but what was there to say? Nothing surely that hadn't already been said. Nothing surely that would bring them any closer, bridge the gap that was ever spanning between them, though they shared the same bed.

But pity and wallowing was for the night time. The day was for moving forward, moving on.

"What time is it?" Allison asked with a yawn. The alarm hadn't gone off yet so she knew it was before 7.

"6:59...7:00" Greg answered at the same time his hand came down on the alarm just as it was going off.

"We've been doing that a lot lately...waking up just before the alarm."

Greg nodded to himself feeling her shift in the bed to lay on her back, he mimicked her.

"What do you have scheduled today?"

Greg though on the question for a moment folding his hands on his chest. "We haven't had a case in weeks...we're all starting to go a little stir crazy. Cuddy swears I still owe her clinic hours...so I guess that means I'll be in the nurses lounge borrowing their TV till I'm found and which case I will move to dermatology my latest refuge as you know."

She gave him a half grin. "Of course you are..." Allison shifted feeling a crick in her back.

"You okay?"

"Hmm? Yeah, fine, just slept funny I think, my lower back has been aching, but only off and on..."

Greg looked at her funny. "Allison..."

It dawned on her about the same time as the muscles of lower back hardened again, only this time sharper, tighter and the pain was moving.

"Allison I think you're having contractions."

Allison started to panic, "You think Sherlock?" she nearly shrieked. She was a doctor, she knew what was happening...she had done this before she knew what to expect. She was having contractions...and that was scary as hell.

Greg grinned at her, "Cute...now just calm down, we're still a ways away now-why don't we go down stairs and watch that DVR'd episode of NCIS...it'll take your mind of it...and when the contractions are closer together we'll go to the hospital and..."

Allison, now sitting at the foot of the bed starred at her husband wide eyed. He was never the calm rational one-ever. But that was the least of her worries. "House," this caught his attention, she hardly ever called him House, "my water just broke."


	2. Baby Boy House

Well...it just had to be continued ;-) I do appreciate all your reviews, thanks so much for reading!

**Chapter Two: Baby Boy House**

_If I had just one wish_  
_Only one demand_  
_I hope he's not like me_  
_I hope he understands_  
_That he can take this life_  
_And hold it by the hand_  
_And he can greet the world_  
_With arms wide open... - Creed_

He's so small. Wrapped in a blue blanket like a caterpillar in a cocoon. Greg stares the label reading 'Baby Boy House'. His baby his beautiful, still so new...mere hours old without any real personality yet to speak of but with his mothers nose...his fathers chin and a mouth that looks so like Katie's. His hands fist as his side.

His heart aches and clenches in his chest. He loves that baby, his son. He loves the child so much he thinks he could actually die from it, its that intense. With that instantaneous love that manifested its self just as soon as he laid on his that screaming bundle came all the worries, the fears the doubts. Katie was a girl, a delicate replica of her mother...a girl who had wrapped him around her finger from her first breath a girl he would have coddled, loved, adored and sheltered from every damn harm possible till the day he died. But his son...boys were different. Boys needed their fathers to show them how to be a man. Boys needed a father Greg had no idea how to be. It wasn't as if Greg had the fatherly ideal to immolate. He knew what he didn't want to be...but he had no idea how to be the father that this this baby would need.

"That's a good looking kid House."

Greg looked over to find Wilson standing next to him. "He takes after Allison."

Wilson smirked, "Couldn't agree more-what are you naming him?"

The air between them was thick and tense with unspoken thoughts. "We aren't sure yet-hence the 'baby boy House'..." Greg tipped his head to window. "But Allison wants Alexander James," he pauses and nods to Wilson's raised eyebrow "Yes-after you, don't let it go to your head."

"You don't want to your son after me?" Wilson feigned hurt.

"No, I don't mind the James part...its the Alexander that I hate, but I haven't come up with a tolerable alternative."

"What about Gregory James?"

Greg stiffened slightly. "Its bad enough he has half my genes, do I need to burden him with my name too."

If Wilson hadn't known his friend for as long as he had he might not have caught the tinge of reluctant hope in his voice.

"Allison already suggested it didn't she?"

Greg nodded.

"You are a good father, you won't make the same mistakes with your son as your dad did with you. You get to be the dad you wish you had."

"What if I don't know how to be that guy?" Greg said quietly eyes dropping in a rare moment of vulnerability.

Wilson put a hand on his friends shoulder "You will figure it out one day at a time."

House smirked slightly. "When I do...do you want me to let you know?" He turned his all seeing blue eyes on Wilson.

Wilson looked like a deer caught in the headlights. "How do you know about that?"

"Your wife talks as much as mine-I'm actually hurt you didn't tell me...congratulations James, you and Lisa both."

"We weren't going to say anything for a few weeks...it seemed hardly right when you and Allison were celebrating...and..."

"Wilson-shut up. Its a good thing. Everyone knows you've been trying to adopt, celebrate. And look at it this way...Baby Boy House will have a playmate. Just don't expect us to get you a gift."

Wilson smiled shaking his head. "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Good."

Two best friends stood shoulder to shoulder looking into the nursery brimming with beautiful hope, new dreams and endless futures. Both were scared to death.

* * *

Greg's hand hesitated over the form, the nurse was starring at him intently, fingers tapping impatiently.

"Why wife should be doing this...her hand writing is much better than mine...though she does tend to have loopy Gs ...and for a boy that just wouldn't do..."

The nurse cocked an eyebrow at him. "It'll be rewritten on the birth certificate."

* * *

"He's beautiful Allison...even if he does look an awful lot like House..." Lisa teased gently as she reached out to smooth the peach fuzz on top of the little boy's head as he slept in his mothers arms.

Allison smiled radiantly. "He does look so much like Greg...I don't know what convinced him but we're naming him Gregory James, I'm hoping the idea of Alexander just scared him into it."

Lisa laughed, "Samantha is 3 weeks old...James and I fly to pick her up next week...they are going to grow up together."

Allison continued to smile, "It's going to be good...Lisa I...I..." tears suddenly whelmed and her throat constricted. "I'm scared to death, I'm so scared of losing him."

Lisa stood from her chair beside the bed and sat a hip on the bed taking Allison into her arms. "Allison, its going to be okay...its going to be okay." Lisa held her, filling in as the mother Allison lost five years before, filling in as she had when Katie was born...when Allison was the jittery bride. Allison was her best friend but also in her heart something of a daughter. "It's going to be okay Allison..."

* * *

"Mr. Cameron," Greg stood to shake the hand of his father in law as he quietly knocked on the cracked hospital room door. Allison was curled on her side dozing, baby James, they agreed having two Greg's in the house would be rather confusing, was sleeping in the bassinet next to the bed.

"How many times do I have to tell you to call me Henry?" Henry Cameron disregarded Greg's offered hand and embraced him. "I see my daughter is sleeping...but where is that new grandson of mine?" Grandpa could hardly contain his pride.

"He's right over here..." Greg's pride matched that of the grandfather, maybe even exceeded-but only slightly.

"Good lookin' boy...looks like his father." Henry's smile could have powered every light in that hospital. "Got his mama's nose though..." he trailed off as baby James started to stir, bright bright blue eyes flickering open. "Hey there...I'm your grandpa..."

Greg saw Henry tear up and shifted his weight from foot to foot feeling intrusive.

"Hold him," Greg said a little gruffly, emotion causing a lump in his throat.

Henry nodded gently picking up the baby and cradling him.

Greg gestured to the chair which Henry took gratefully. Greg moved to lean against the window frame and watched. Watched the love fill the older mans face. He wondered what look would be on his fathers face when he looked at his grandson.

His parents had seen Katie a month after she was born-they were the doting grandparents to be sure. Doting more than he had expected, but Katie was a girl...this was a grandson, someone to be raised in a certain way. Greg stiffened just thinking about what his fathers opinion would be of how his grandson should be raised.

Ten minutes or so passed and apparently sensing the company in the room Allison began to wake. "Daddy...you're here," she ran a hand over her eyes sitting up groggily.

"Yes baby, I'm here...just admiring my grandson...you did good kid." Henry embraced his daughter after carefully transferring the precious bundle to his father.

"I think I'm going to go get some coffee-would you like some Henry?" James was sleeping fitfully so Greg put him in the bassinet being sure his blue blanket was tucked just so, his heart clenched as he touched his soft baby cheek, he would never get over this feeling.

"That would be great son, thank you."

Greg nodded then his eyes sought Allison. She met his gaze and gave him a shy, proud and loving smile. There was genuine love and happiness in her eyes-that look had been fleeting and scarce of recent, when he saw it he greedily hugged it to his memory and let it linger to fuel during those harsh, dry and angry patches which had been more frequent then her smiles.

The halls of PPTH in the maternity ward were quiet and he moved quickly, with purpose to the far nurses station where he knew there would coffee and cups. He filled two cups slowly. There was nowhere he wanted to be less than alone with his thoughts. But being in that hospital room with his wife, his son and the adoring grandfather...the adoring father made him tense. He loved his family but he hated this feeling of anxiousness and inadequacy..the fear of failing.

But he wasn't going to be the absent father either so he picked up the coffee and started back to his wife and baby.

There were a couple additional voices mingling in the room when he approached, they were muffled so he couldn't tell who they were. Surely well wishers from Allison's many admirers in the hospital he was sure and tried to force down the irritation and snarky comments as he pushed open the door with his elbow.

"He has the House eyes...Gregory James is a fine strong name..."

Greg stopped in his tracks, blinked once, eyes going first to the woman sitting holding his son, flicking then to the coffee cups as they trembled in his hands then finally to the man standing at the woman's side.

"Dad."


End file.
